The Sheriff
by rantingdude
Summary: The tale of The Sheriff of the wasteland. (OC)


The Sheriff

When I was ten a warped barrel got an old kalashnikov to explode in my older brother's hands and from that point on I couldn't hear no more. I'm sure better off than he is though, 'cause he's dead now. I suppose I'd be the best person to tell you that.

We were defending the homestead, me and him, because we were the oldest boys and it was our duty to be doing all the killing and such. He was the sheriff with his shiny badge and I was the deputy with my .22 rifle. Dad was mayor, he didn't fight unless they breached us, like all the women. Besides me and my dad and Abraham on the homestead I had six sisters, and two younger brothers, and two moms, and one aunt, and one grandma. My older sister Esther was the one what taught me to shoot, she had an old nine millimeter and took real good care of it, like it was her baby. We didn't tell dad, it was just a secret between the two of us, 'cause of out of all my family we was the closest.

I didn't care much for about anybody else, me and Abraham were as brothers I guess but I don't know what that meant beyond he told me what to do all the time, like go out and scout around the mountain for raiders and bears and such things would want to kill us all. Lotta times I almost died, one time I fell down the slope, just had to crawl back up. When I got back to the homestead, Abe turned to me and said that it was my turn to watch from the tower. He made me clean the guns, too, and fix the generator all the time. Maybe he should've cleaned his own goddamn guns.

After the accident it was harder than ever to talk to people on the homestead. Nobody taught me to read, there weren't anything to be read, and maybe sometimes Mary scratched things into the dirt, but they were just scratches to me. It was my dad what eventually taught me to understand again, he knew himself some sign languages and he taught me what he knew and we could talk together. But he didn't have to sign me nothing to tell me I was the new Sheriff, all he did was hand me that shiny, shiny badge that Abraham'd worn since long as I could remember.

I can still remember that badge, gleaming silver in the light, a big star that sat on your chest like the best armor in the whole world. Weren't nothing I ever saw could take me on when I wore that silver star, like a little shield that made bullets go wrong and knives bend and break. It didn't just protect me though, it made me better, like every bullet I ever shot wearing it went straight between the eyes, and the gun never jammed.

Nobody on the homestead never gave me trouble with that badge on. My little brother Samson got to be the one what fixed the generator and the pump, and Esther was just so proud of me, she cleaned all the guns for me and never said a word, or at least it never looked like she did. She just looked me up and down all quiet and sad, not like she pitied me or nothing, nothing like that. She just knew that it weren't fair what I had to lose to get that badge, that it weren't fair I lost my ears and my brother even though in the end it was the right thing what happened anyway.

Abraham even knew it was right, I saw it in his eyes, I can tell you that. He knew that it was my time to be the sheriff and that his time was gone and done with like all the folks that he had ever had to kill in his lifetime. You could tell that, you could tell that he had killed a lot of people and animals and he knew what was right to die and what was right to live, 'cause he'd been the sheriff for a good long time, and the sheriff knows what's right to die and such.

You don't know that at first, what's right to die. Sometimes maybe when you're the sheriff at first you got to be told what needs killing by your hand. Sometimes you wonder why you got to be the one to do all the killing, but luckily I had my dad what who is also the mayor, and he told me why I got to be killing and why I know who got to be killed.

He reminded me what he taught me that I was the representer of the law, that in rough times like these you got to have someone who stands up for what's right, who knows what got to be done and does it so nobody else got to have that burden what weighing them down, because the sheriff is the strongest and the rightest there ever is. The sheriff takes that burden of knowing what is got to be done and when and the sheriff loves that burden like it's his most prized possession, even more valuable than that big shiny badge. A lot of folks out there don't know what's the right thing to be done, and what's the wrong thing to be doing, so the sheriff's got to teach them by lead or by dead, goddammit. God never made nobody the right, they had to make themselves the right. Although, sometimes they get a little help. My dad even told me that when he was younger, he was the sheriff of the homestead, and grandpa was the mayor, and grandpa had to help dad be the sheriff at first, but he figured it out after awhile, and I would too.

That was what he said, maybe not all right then but he said a lot in the way he looked at me and with his hands and sometimes he got himself a little thing like the badge and pointed to that and like, to explain to my dead ears why I got to shoot Abraham. The sheriff got a duty to protect people, to make sure that they is taken care of in the wasteland we all live in. The wasteland is a harsh place, it's a tough place where everybody but the toughest got nothing to do but suffer, and my dad signed to me we sure as hell weren't going to let Abe suffer no more. He didn't got no arms, laid up in bed all burnt and shit, and dad said nobody want to live life like that. Abe said something, too, but I didn't know how to read lips then, and when I asked dad what he said, dad told me that he agreed that it was his time. Abe got this look on his face, and he talked to dad, and dad looked at him and shook his head, and Abe got a real peaceful look in his eyes.

I know that when he fell asleep from the tranquilizers dad had gave him, he went to sleep looking like some man who had a good meal and a warm bed. He knew everything was going to be alright, that even though he weren't fit to survive in this cruel and unrelenting world, he was going to be alright. Because he would be dead by the hands of his sheriff, the one man in the wastes who killed with the mercy of a thousand angels. That was what my dad told me, and I knew he was right as I slid the knife he gave me down Abe's neck, covering it up with a pillow so the blood didn't go nowhere we needed. Blood'll rust metal, and just about everything metal we had already had its fair share of rust and wear.

Abe died good, even though he should've died right then and there when his gun blew up, and not dying did himself a disservice to himself and the homestead. But after I made it right, made him right, everything was as good as it would ever be.

Everybody treated me right, although some of my kin what like Esther was never bad to me in the first place. My grandma never pinched my cheeks again, and Mary never once threw a glass at me and told me to shut my goddamn mouth about such and such. Everybody knew I was too important for them to lose, keeping them safe and enforcing the law. I made sure what was right on the homestead, even when I had to hold up my gun and keep it pointed straight at Samson's heart and tell him to get in line or get the rewards owed to each and every lawbreaker. I was the sheriff not to be trifled with, and I always made real the laws the mayor made up for each and every one of us to follow.

Even though I weren't too sure on all of them. I mean to say, I was a good sheriff what done right by my mayor, but once I sure didn't know what he was thinking with his laws. Esther didn't mind a bit I think, that I got to take her to dad's room every night just before I went walking on the rounds about the outer palisade. Course by that time I always was seeing Esther with a cloud hanging over her, but I figured she was just always so upset about me getting my ears blown off by our brother's own gun she had made herself a promise just for me what she would never be happy again. As sheriff I felt it were at least a bit my duty to make sure she was keeping up on her own oath, but she never needed my help with moping around, and for that I was grateful. I can't say I could or ever would make her stop her chaste vows to herself, but I always kind of thought maybe it was silly she tore herself up so on my account.

I got first seat at dinner, too, didn't matter which mom made it for us, my mom or other mom. Except when I had to climb the watchtower, then they sent my dinner up there with Samson, who sometimes sat up there with me, because he was getting old enough to be deputy. I taught him how to shoot, too, with a pistol instead of my .22.

As I got older I started learning how to read lips, so that I could talk to someone besides the mayor. Turned out, though, most everybody never had nothing to say. Grandma jabbered on about this and that from when she was a girl, how the food she ate were better and more to the like of her tastes. Mary talked on and on about some trader what came about every few weeks to sell us some ammo and what not for the food we was growing in our homestead. I liked traders, even though they were rare, because sometimes they drew a trail of raiders, and I could kill all them raiders as though I could just kill all the raiders in the wasteland just from my perch up in the tower on the homestead. It was a foolish thought, I'm bound to know, but it sure as nothing else made me feel like the sheriff. I didn't much care for the people what was trading, though, they had bullets and gun bits and that was all I needed from them, not like Mary what with her always talking about being excited for that trader boy to show up like he did. People are for protecting, and beyond that I sure as sure don't know anything much else and I don't care to learn. Learning too much about not being a sheriff won't never help me in the long run, that's to be sure.

Anyway, for a couple years or more things were good as they ought to be because I was the sheriff and I was the best sheriff we'd ever had on the homestead. I made sure everything went just right for everybody, made sure everyone did what they were supposed to everyday. Mom and other mom always had food on the table, all the machines we ever had always kept fixed, and everybody slept in the rooms what they were supposed to, ate in the rooms what they were supposed to, and hid from raiders in rooms they were supposed to. Nobody left, like they were supposed to. But that all changed and it was too soon for my liking.

Esther told me herself first. I was pretty good about reading lips by that point, but even then I didn't understand some of the words she said. I understood the most important bit, that she was leaving, but some of the words I didn't have nothing to think of when I read her say them. She said something about being hurt, and someone else, someone who was around, but I'd never met them before. Which was a weird thing to say, seeing as how nobody ever came to the homestead without me finding out about it. I figured maybe she smuggled someone in, and I got mighty irate about that, but she said it wasn't like that, that she was the person or some such nonsense.

I told her she was crazy without a doubt, because she wasn't some different person, she was my big sister Esther, and she was going to be my big sister Esther all the time. I told her she would be my big sister Esther even if she left, but I told her she wasn't going to leave, because everything was perfect at the homestead and nobody had any need to be going anyplace else. I told her if she left, I couldn't be her sheriff no more, and she told me I'd always be her sheriff. Then she cried for a bit, and I had to go watch from the tower.

When I got back she and the mayor were yelling, I guess she'd gone and told him about her plans to egress. The mayor sure was upset his treasurer was getting gone, he about threw a couple pots and pans before I grabbed his arms and told him to settle down. The sheriff didn't want no pots and pans getting ruined. Esther wasn't crying anymore, she was pouting pretty hard. She had a black eye, dad must've hit her. I hoped she got some sense from the blow, but it didn't look like it. The mayor was good at hitting people to get them to cooperate, but I guess there weren't enough force in the world to get Esther off this whole "going" idea. Esther said some stuff about raising things someplace else, wherever the traders came from, and I tried to tell her weren't nothing going to grow out there but they'd be growing it already, but the mayor started yelling before I could talk. He said it was against the law to leave, that if she left she'd be a lawbreaker, and she said she was leaving and she wasn't coming back and a whole mess of words that I didn't know.

That afternoon, she gave me her nine millimeter, told me she'll always love me, and said goodbye. I tried to tell her that she was breaking the law. I tried to tell her that even if she weren't following the mayor's laws, there was no way she'd make it out there in the wasteland, especially without her nine millimeter. I told her she'd be better off dead here than alive in the wastes. She didn't listen to me. I held her gun and cried, but she just walked out to say goodbye to everybody else.

I watched her exit through the gates from the watchtower, I watched her turn around and wave slow and sad. She wore a nothing but a dirty sunday frock and a bonnet. She hadn't took much, just a lunch and a knife. I saw her look all alone and small in the big and empty wasteland. I shot her in the back of the head with my 22. She fell forward slow somehow, when her head hit the rocky ground it smashed open a bit.

I'm the sheriff. I had to do what was right, even when Esther wouldn't. She was better off dead at the homestead, than alive in the wastes.

I didn't talk to nobody after that. I made sure everyone was safe. I patrolled around the homestead three times a day, killing just about everything that got near. I shot the trader what Mary talked about, took all his stuff and gave it to the mayor. Nobody came near the homestead what wasn't trying to kill us one way or another, so I took care of them before they got close. I slept in the watchtower, when I slept at all. Samson caused a ruckus one day, I shot him in the foot. Nobody was going to do wrong on the homestead, not raiders, not family, not nobody. I started to think, maybe there was something wrong, something wrong on the homestead they were all keeping from me. I started rooting through everyone's stuff, and I found the drugs the mayor had been storing. I deposed the mayor, on criminal charges, and put Samson in charge. I couldn't be mayor, I was the sheriff and deaf besides. But Samson listened to what I had to say, and if he didn't I asked him how his limp was.

I started taking the drugs. It was within the law, they were good because they kept me up, kept me alert. I widened my patrols of the area, to the point where I was coming up to little camps full of people I'd kill. One night, I guess I patrolled too far. From the other side of the mountains some slavers came and cleared out the homestead. I think they were slavers, because as far as I was told raiders didn't take any prisoners. I got back to the homestead, and I found the corpses of other mom, grandma, the former mayor, and Samson, but everybody else was gone. I figured that was for the best. The family was clearly breaking the law, and it was good that the lesser offenders got to serve out their sentence safe with slavers.

I decided I'd go out into the wastes then, because I figured I was getting to be a good enough sheriff that I figured I could be sheriff of the whole wastes. I figured I'd bring a little law to the lawless wasteland, making sure people is doing what is right, and making sure who's got to die gets died. Making sure slaves serve out their sentences, and big cities of lawbreakers get what's coming to them.

Someone's got to be the sheriff. That someone is me. I'm The Sheriff.


End file.
